Hailey, baby
by Thriving Willow
Summary: Dean was all too accustomed to Nightmares-it was second nature for them to haunt his mind. Hell, kind of lived in one. But a new nightmares just suck. AN: during season 1; One-shot


Author's Note: Thanks to my beta. I believe I was a wee bit of a hassle, revising and re-sending. Hopefully, she puts up with me, eh? So, I have a few lines near the end that are italicized but, for some reason, it won't show up. Where it says, "Why do you ask, Dean?" near the end, insert italicized-ness. Anyways, enjoy. I'm off to watch Avatar for the third time :)

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He was used to nightmares. Hell, he lived in one, didn't he? Seemed like he did, anyways. He had the usual running around his head, gnashing their teeth and spewing every cuss word in the book, and then some. He even became acquainted with a few. The one where Mom burned to a cozy crisp came every November. It slid in every other month or so after that, but it liked to hang around through Thanksgiving especially. After all, what were the holidays without good ol' family?

But this little girl he didn't even know was an all new level of nightmare. It shocked him how much is scared the hell out of him. How guilty it made him feel.

The first time she appeared, she was sitting in the corner of a small room, her arms folded across her white nightgown. Her face was blank, almost serene, but not quite.

Dean stared at her for a very long second. Heavily, he realized he was dreaming. He tried to think back—what month was is? What was the usual? The girl seemed vaguely familiar, but he couldn't put a name to her face. She was pretty, though, that he did notice. Blond hair and big blue eyes.

He realized he was sitting in a ratty green love-chair. He wiggled his toes in his boots.

"So, who are you?" he asked roughly, getting tired. Which was SO backwards, because he was sleeping. But the new Nightmare didn't seem to care, did it? They never did.

The girl with the big blue eyes only stared mutely at him. She stood up, and Dean reached for where his .45 should be. As in most dreams, he was lacking his coveted salt-rounds. Figures. Besides, her head didn't even pass his chest.

She only held out her hand. "Come. Please," she whispered. Dean ground his teeth together. Lovely. Well, she wasn't screaming, burning, or wielding a knife. Maybe it wasn't a Nightmare after all.

Of course, when did anything ever turn out in Dean's favor? Right. Never.

But what the hell.

He stood up and took her outstretched hand.

Dean frowned. Holding her hand felt strange. It was cool, soft. Something was off though.

A door that hadn't been there seconds before appeared. Dean paused, staring at the crisp white paint and shiny door handle. The girl gave him a sharp look before tugging it open, pulling him in after.

The white light made him wince, and he let go of her soft hand. When he could finally see again, she was gone. He was standing in a front yard, green grass and a sprinkler going.

"Ah, hell…" he cursed, looking more closely around. Stupid creepy little girl, leaving him dinking around in some random yard. "You'd think I'd be able to control what happens in my own head," he thought bitterly, "instead of weirdo subconscious-crazies tell'en me what to do."

His own subconscious-crazies, but that was beside the point.

The house had blue shutters and squeaky-clean windows. Neat curtains trimmed them, blocking his view of what may lay inside.

Obviously, his Nightmare—or whatever the hell it was—wanted him to go inside the house. So, naturally, he walked past the house, crunching over the stiff grass and dodging the sprinkler.

The neighborhood was creepy-empty, water running on every lawn. A car parked carefully in every driveway. The glass so shiny, it was invisible. The normal apple-pie life.

Except one. The grass was dead. The car looked like it'd been crapped on. A front window was broken.

Dean considered for a second. He wanted to get the Nightmare over with as soon as possible, so he figured he would play along. Besides, the blue-eyed

girl might return. And she gave him the creeps. Not that he wasn't used to them, but still…

He jogged across the street, glancing around for any sign of life. It was quiet. Dean hated the quiet. It was too unnatural. He almost yelled out for someone but decided against it. Sometimes being alone was better than inviting what was locked inside his head out to play.

Dean felt strange knocking, but even stranger not knocking. Luckily, the door swung open—without much assistance, he noted grimly—and he was free of the knocking dilemma.

The little girl was sitting on the bottom step, her chin propped up on her chin. Her expression had changed from chilly-indifferent to bored.

Dean paused, staring at her. "Hi," He finally tried. Because she was just looking at him, blinking every once in a while. Friggin big blue eyes.

"You can come in," She sat up straighter, a little yellow ball appearing from the folds of her dress. She bounced it once, catching it, bounced it again.

Dean took a step in. "Fine,"

The little girl's lips twitched. A smirk that was strangely familiar… "It's okay, Dean," With a flick of her wrist, she tossed the ball at him. He snagged it automatically. He gave the girl a hard look; he was tired of this the game she was playing.

The girl stood up just as he opened his mouth to demand a name. She gave him a wider smile and he knew he'd definitely seen it before…

She grabbed his hand—such a quick movement that he jumped but her little fingers held tight. Dean wanted, more than anything, to shove the little girl away. But it was that—that thing. He didn't know what it was, but he couldn't bring himself to hurt the girl either. She was still creepy—she got a ten there, and his charts were pretty hard to top.

He still glared. "What do you want?"

The smile fell slowly off her face and she looked around. Dean realized the house was trashed. A conjoining living room had a charred couch, an overturned chair, and shards of glass glinting on the floor. Her roaming eyes finally returned to his face. "My name's Hailey," She said at last, completely ignoring his question.

Hailey. Dean rolled the name around in his head. He'd never heard it before in his life. It didn't make sense. He usually had Nightmares about people who'd died. Someone he'd met. People he'd failed to save. People like his mother. Not people he'd never met.

Maybe…maybe he was just dreaming. Like for real dreaming. He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept like a rock. No Nightmares to interrupt. Probably never. Even in his earliest memories, fire had flickered behind his eyelids every time they closed.

Hailey tugged on his hand and turned towards the front room, yanking him from his thoughts. "Come talk to me, Dean. I want to show you my house." Her little voice chimed. It seemed to echo off the walls of the house.

Stupid, creepy, screwed up dreams. But maybe nothing more than that. Not a Nightmare…The idea intrigued him more than was healthy.

So, he followed Hailey, the weird girl with the yellow ball and blue eyes.

"Are your parents home, Hailey?"

The back of her hair rippled as she shook her head. "No,"

"This is my couch, Dean." Suddenly, she released his hand to point at the sofa.

"Lovely," Dean gave a distracted nod. He didn't care about the friggin couch.

Hailey picked at the black, crumbling fabric on it. "You don't really want to see the house, Dean." It was a statement, not a question.

"Yeah," He looked down at her, "Not really. But I do want to ask you a few questions though,"

Hailey gave a little shrug, shaking her hair from her face. There it was again—that familiar—it was—something. It cracked his tiny hope of his Normal Dream Hypothesis and Dean was getting more annoyed by the second. If it was his dream, he should know all the people in it.

She took a few steps away, ducking behind a little desk. She popped back up with a shoe box in hand. "I have something I want to show you, Dean."

"Right. After my questions though—"

Hailey took the lid off. "We can do it while you ask questions, Dean."

"Fine. Whatever. Can you remember how you got here, Hailey?"

She motioned for him to sit down; distractedly, he picked a spot not littered with glass. She folded her legs up under her dress and settled down with her box in hand. "We moved here when my Daddy got a job, Dean. Here," She handed him something and, for the first time, Dean realized it was dolls in the box. The Barbie kind. The last time Dean had played with dolls, he'd been nailing Ken to a tree. When he was seven. But Hailey seemed very serious.

"What? You want me—You want me to play with Ken?" He asked belligerently, glaring at the doll in offense.

She blinked. "I'm answering your questions, Dean."

With a little growl, Dean snatched the Ken up. "Fine. Next question."

Hailey laid down cloths squares, each square a room. Dean aimlessly moved Ken around from room to room, thinking up his next question. "Do you know what's going on here, Hailey?"

"Like what, Dean?" Barbie moved from the kitchen back to a little pantry. Ken hung sideways, a leg twisted around backwards. Forgotten.

Dean pursed his lips. "Like…How no one's here,"

"You're doing it wrong, Dean."

"There's no one else, then?"

Hailey reached over and shoved Ken out of the house. "Dean, that's not how it goes. He leaves. He always does."

"Sorry. He's gone," Dean tucked Ken behind him, glad to be done with Creepy-Ken.

"The people didn't move away, Dean. They disappeared. And, no, I don't know why," She gave a toss of her hair.

Dean frowned. Disappeared? Right. He'd just gone crazy, was all. Looney. It was all in his head. Dean sat up straighter, a thought striking him. What if it was the African Root mojo? He started at Hailey in a different light. Could it be her? It seemed highly unlikely…

"Come back now, Dean. He came home. Dean, Sam comes home now,"

Dean's eyes snapped up and his heart lurched in his chest. Oh, hell, no. "What—What'd you say?" She couldn't have, could she?

Hailey looked up innocently. "Daddy's coming home, Dean." She reached around and grabbed Ken, walking him through the doorway. Her words seemed to float in the air, repeating over and over.

Dean looked closer at Ken. Shaggy brown hair, his plastic grin creepy as hell. A tan jacket. His clothes seemed dirtier than when Hailey had first given Dean the doll. "Okay," Dean agreed hesitantly, walking the doll—it was just a doll—back into the house. He was paying much more attention now.

"What's—what's she doing now?" Dean nodded shakily at Barbie.

"She was about to take a shower but…"

"But what?" Dean suddenly couldn't breathe.

"Someone came. They hurt her, Dean." He watched, horrified, as Hailey set the doll on the floor of a bedroom, and her arms twisted out at a strange angle. "But Sam wasn't home to save her. She dies." Hailey hid Jess—Barbie away and Dean found Ken moving slowly towards the room.

"His brother comes, Dean. Saves him." Another, darker haired man appeared and Hailey's hands pull them both from the house. "But momma's gone." Hailey's voice turned very soft, almost a keen. "She's not coming back, Dean. Never, never, never. Because it all fell down."

The roasted couch. The trashed house. Broken glass. Upturned furniture. So, it was a Nightmare after all.

"What's your mom's name? And—and your dad's?" Dean's voice shook. It felt like everything inside of him was rattling. The exact feeling he got when he flew places. He was gonna be sick.

"My momma? Jessica. Sam and Jessica Winchester. Why do you ask, Dean?" Her wide eyes stared at him. "Why do you ask?"

Dean woke up very suddenly. His thrashing had managed to knot his legs in the blankets, and he stumbled out of bed. Cussing, trying to forget his newest Nightmare, Dean managed to get his feet detached from the scratchy motel blanket.

He had trouble breathing. He grabbed as his chest, gasping. Since when did Dean feel guilty? Of course he'd felt bad about things over the years, but he'd managed to shove them all behind a thick wall labeled Things to Never Think of Again. Forgotten. Kinda. But they'd never given him so much guilt before. He'd taken away Sammy's life, his future, and anything in between. He hadn't meant to rip Jessica from him, too.

"Who's Hailey?" Sam tossed a hand towel at Dean's face.

Dean blinked several times, trying to yank the rag away while making his lungs function again. "Who?" he gasped, clumsily pulling off the towel. He clenched his eyes closed, rubbing his face. "Hailey—Hailey is…no one," he finished lamely. He sat up, clearing his throat. "I don't know a Hailey."

Sam gave him that look. The one that said—"Right," Sam scoffed skeptically.

Dean shook his head, brushing at his hair like maybe it would wipe away the memory of Hailey. Couldn't've been over six years old. And I got her mom ganked…took away her whole world.

Sam shifted, and Dean glanced up. "Hey, are you okay?" Sam frowned, a toothbrush in one hand.

"Yeah," Dean snapped quickly, standing up. He grabbed a shirt and yanked it over his head. "Why wouldn't I be? Just dandy. Go grab some breakfast, will ya'? I'm hungry." Dean forced his lips into a smile. Plus, he was pretty sure something in him would snap if he had to look Sam in the face any longer. Not after he just played Barbie with his would-be daughter.

"Alright." Sam shrugged and walked out the motel room, jacket thrown over his shoulder.

As soon as the door clicked, Dean shuddered, sliding down onto the floor. Every time he closed his eyes, Hailey's face appeared. Her wide, blue eyes.

Why do you ask, Dean?

Dean sighed, propping his elbows up on his knees. He had the sick feeling in his gut that this new Nightmare was gonna be sticking around a lot longer than even Mom's.

Hailey wasn't really real. Just a figure of his imagination. He rubbed a bleary eye. And to think, she would probably be sitting there, in the burn living room, yellow ball bouncing over and over…

Why do you ask, Dean?


End file.
